Replacing Rahmbo

Ezra Klein has an excellent round-up of everything you'd might want to know about the man replacing Rahm Emanuel as White House Chief Of Throwing Things Staff:  Pete Rouse.

Emanuel was a gift from the Gods of Journalistic Color. He was witty and profane. He liked talking to the press, and his friends and foes liked talking about him to the press. He had an outsized personality and a Washington legend that could be used to explain both his achievements and his shortcomings. The man who is replacing him, Pete Rouse, doesn't.

Rouse, who used to be known as the '101st senator,' was Tom Daschle's former chief of staff. When Daschle unexpectedly lost his 2004 reelection race, Obama snapped him up. Rouse went from being chief of staff for the most powerful Democrat in the Senate to being chief of staff for the body's most junior member. It turned out to be a good decision.

Quiet and retiring, Rouse doesn't make a point of going on the Sunday shows or talking to reporters. Remember that no-drama thing you used to hear about the Obama team? That's Rouse. He's like a black hole for drama. But that means few in Washington know much about him.

The reality is if Rahm was the Don of the White House, then Rouse was the Consigliere, the guy who actually fixed all the problems that Rahm and Larry Summers would cause with the rest of the White House Staff.  Rahmbo was the lightning rod for the administration, but Rouse was the fixer behind the scenes.  In his own words:

"The deputy chiefs of staff report to me, one for policy and one for operations, who run the place from day to day...I fix problems. There’s a number of us who fix problems - execution, anticipate things. I know a lot of the senators, Rahm knows the House very well. The thing about both the campaign and the office here, it’s very collaborative. You have a loosely enforced hierarchy where people are responsible for certain things, but people get along very well and there’s no turf. People help each other and not compete with each other. That’s the Obama style, and that was the Daschle style too when he was leader."

Rahm got both the glory and and brickbats as Chief of Swearing Staff.   Rouse got all the work done.  Now Rouse has to handle it all.  We'll see what he can do for Obama as the face of the White House now.